New Years Resolution Phase 1: Two bee or not two bees

Phase 1: Practice Carving the Bees

New years resolution! 

Get back to a long imagined plan to advance my woodworking skills and combine them into unique pieces.

Goal: 

By the end of the year show a combination piece consisting of:

Woodturning + woodcarving+ pyrography + CNC + flatwork.

Setting up the shop for carving

Of course this is and excuse to buy some tools and ways to properly store them.

I already have a turbo carver and a set of palm chisels but lacked a set of decent full size chisels.

I found Mary May's Woodcarving and this was a great refresher. I will be back to this resource to get advanced instructions. The basics were free and the videos were very well presented.

That site directed me to Chippingaway where I bought the beginner set of chisels. This was the best price I could find for Pheil tools and Mary May had pre-selected a starter set.

I then built a case for the chisels that allowed me to hold the chisels while carving as well as store them. These tools are a dream to use. Now I have to hone my sharpening skills on a new set of tools. Uggh I hate it when that happens!

I used my bench bull laid flat on the bench to increase the height of the bench (aching back) and that helped make the hand carving more enjoyable.

This project combines flatwork+woodcarving+pyrography. 

I carved this Bee scene into basswood as practice since I have been way from carving for N years. The bee image came from the web. To make a flexible template I attached a paper copy of the bee to the sticky side of a piece of sticky back foam, the kind you get at Micheal's. Then I cutout the bee from the substrate with an xacto knife. This provides a robust pattern that can be formed around curved surfaces and traced.

The B was copied on my printer...

The copy was pressed onto the back of this foam material

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Roughed out

After finish and sanding

A hexagon was cut from thick Vellum and glued to the end of a stick.
The stick holds the hexagon on the surface while a pencil is used to outline it.

Waiting to burn the hive in the background

The Final Countdown

Hive burned into the background

Color added with colored pencils that are dipped in turpentine

Next steps

My plan is to carve this same scene, up around the mouth, on an aspen vessel .

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Enjoy and please comment,
Don